


These Walls Around Us

by agenthaywood



Series: Someday You'll Understand [17]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-18 20:30:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3582936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agenthaywood/pseuds/agenthaywood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye attempts to work in a high stress situation with unstable powers. It doesn't go well. Ward and 33 get a visitor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Walls Around Us

These Walls around Us

 

Skye woke up feeling groggy. Her head was on a pillow but the rest of her body felt like it was lying on concrete. Of course, that could have just been the ache she could feel in her muscles.

 

Her entire body tensed during the quake. It was like she was forcing the energy out. Skye looked around the walls. She was in the cell on the BUS.

 

_Guess this is what you get for a panic attack nowadays._ Skye chastised herself. She got up from the metal bed and walked over to the door. When she tried to pull it open, she found the door wouldn’t budge.

 

“Hey! You want to let me out?” Skye yelled as she racked her hand against the cool metal.

 

“That depends, are you stable? Because you tried to bite me not twenty minutes ago.” Hunter’s voice rang out from the other side of the door.

 

“Just open the damn door Hunter!” Skye yelled agitated.

 

The glass of water sitting on the table in the middle of the room gave a little thump, getting Skye’s attention. Skye looked at her hand and saw the appendage shaking. She took a breath in an attempt to still her breathing.

 

The water stopped shaking. The door opened.

 

“You OK?” Hunter asked when he saw the flushed look on Skye’s face.

 

“I’m fine.” Skye brushed past him and walked off.

 

\--

 

Fitz was in the garage with Mack. Mack was under the hood of one of the SUV’s changing the oil. Fitz was standing off to the side working on a tablet.

 

Skye walked over and grabbed Fitz by the collar of his shirt. She pulled him away and towards the isolation of the shelves stacked with miscellaneous car parts.

 

“We need to tell Coulson!” Skye violently whispered.

 

“Why?” Fitz asked.

 

“Because I had a damn panic attack in the middle of a mission and I almost got Bobbi and Hunter killed!” Skye ran a hand through her hair trying to stem her pulse.

 

“Okay, say you tell Coulson. What is he going to do? He’s going to lock you up and Simmons and Mack are going to want to run tests on you. If they can’t reverse what happened, and I may not be the best biologist, but I know you can’t change DNA, they’ll put you down. You know they will.” Fitz tried to reason.

 

“Well we have to do something.” Skye pleaded.

 

“Stay calm, and wait.” Fitz assured her. “Simmons is calming down but I wouldn’t say anything with Mack around yet.”

 

“OK.” Skye lamented.

 

“Alright, now why don’t you go get some rest you look terrible.” Fitz patted her shoulder.

 

“Wow Fitz, you know how to compliment a girl.” Skye mumbled before walking off towards her bunk.

 

“What’d I say?” Fitz said to himself.

 

\--

 

Skye tried to sleep but she couldn’t make her brain shut down. She kept replaying the quake in her head. Every time she did, however, instead of just the ground shaking it was the entire police department with Hunter and Bobbi still inside. The thought would end with the building falling apart with them still inside and Skye having to explain what happened to Coulson and May.

 

Giving up on sleep, Skye threw on a hoodie and grabbed her wraps from her dresser.

 

Some things never change.

 

\--

 

Skye was throwing punch after punch onto the bag. Surprisingly the ground wasn’t shaking. Skye was expecting the PLAYGROUND to be falling apart right now but instead everything was calm.

 

Skye was so wrapped up in pounding out her frustrations on the bag that she didn’t see May walk in from her peripheral, something that May found a little disheartening with the panic attack Bobbi described during the debriefing.

 

May sat down on one of the stacks of mats in the corner and watched Skye attack the bag with a ruthless fury. She expected to see Skye try a couple of kicks but instead the boxing was prominent.

 

May knew about blowing off steam. She also knew about focusing on one task to keep unpleasant thoughts from coming in.

 

After watching Skye beat the bag with reckless abandon for a few moments, May had enough. She went to stand behind Skye and waited a breath before tapping Skye on the shoulder.

 

Skye threw a punch on reflex. May blocked and flipped Skye over on her back on reflex.

 

Skye felt the air leave her lungs as her back collided with the wooden floor of the gym. She opened her eyes and saw May staring at her with something Skye thought might have been impatience.

 

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s impolite to sneak up on people?” Skye said with a raspy voice.

 

“She did. I didn’t listen.” May answered as she held out her hand for Skye to grab. She did and May helped Skye stand on her feet.

 

“What are you doing down here? Coulson’s still waiting for your report.” May asked.

 

“I was told to get some sleep. Tried, failed, then I came down here to blow off some steam. Coulson will have his report by morning, I promise.” Skye explained.

 

“The report’s not what concerns him.” May replied.

 

“Then what is it?” Skye asked as she lined back up with the punching bag.

 

“The fact that one of his best, but also his youngest agent had a panic attack in the middle of an acquisition job. That never happened before.” May looked at her with her arms crossed.

 

“I’m fine.” Skye answered the question that was hanging in the air as she started punching the bag again.

 

“Are you?” May doubted.

 

“Yeah,” Skye grunted as she punched the bag harder than she was before.

 

“Skye stop.” May ordered when she watched Skye’s arm slide against her shoulder blade.

 

She was punching the bag too hard.

 

Skye didn’t listen. She just kept punching the bag as hard as she could.

 

“Skye!” May spoke up but not before Skye threw a final punch against the bag and a small crack was heard from her arm.

 

Skye grunted in pain and May felt her legs vibrate a little. Her phone must have gone off. It could wait.

 

Skye was kneeling next to the punching bag holding her hand close to her chest. May knelt down next to her and tried to examine the hand. Skye shied away from her but May was insistent.

 

May took a firm grasp of Skye’s wrist and moved the hand around testing the range of motion. Skye bit back a small whimper as the appendage was twisted against the grain.

 

“You’re fine right now but don’t punch the bag again.” May spoke sternly. May pulled her phone out of her pocket to check what it received.

 

“Come on, there’s something going on in the briefing room.” May helped Skye up and started walking to the room.

 

May looked back at the phone to read the message.

 

// _BRIEFING IN 5. DISCUSSING NEXT MOVE AGAINST HYDRA. BRING SKYE//_

What caught May off guard was the icon in the upper right corner. _Silent._ Her phone wasn’t supposed to vibrate.

 

So what did?

 

\--

 

Skye sat closer to Fitz than May normally saw them. Then again, Skye was normally helping Coulson give the briefing. While she was in quarantine Coulson ran through the Intel. on his own.

 

“We’ve reached an agreement with Gen. Talbot to hand off Bakshi. Bobbi and Hunter will be running the escort while May follows in the Quinjet. Skye, I want you and Mack in the SUV behind Bobbi and Hunter. Don’t attract any unnecessary attention to yourselves. HYDRA knows Bakshi is either our prisoner or dead, and we hope it’s the latter.” Coulson prattled off the details.

 

Skye paid attention to the bit with her name in it so she knew what she was doing, but instead she was replaying the small tremor in the gym.

 

The crack in her wrist made Skye’s heart involuntarily spike and the tremor started. May didn’t seem to notice but Skye knew better than to assume the woman didn’t. May probably did and was just waiting for a moment to sit down with Skye to discuss it with her.

 

“What do we do if HYDRA makes a move for him, Sir?” Hunter spoke up.

 

“Engage but don’t make a spectacle. Try to keep to backroads and away from populated areas whenever possible.” Coulson replied.

 

Hunter nodded and slouched down in his seat. Skye moved her wrist to check her flexibility. The pain was duller now, more bearable.

 

The tremors were still. She could do her job.

 

\--

 

Moving Bakshi along the backroads proved to be a fruitful option. The fruit being a sever lack of interference from HYDRA. Mack drove and didn’t speak which suited Skye just fine.

 

She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to think either, but that wasn’t exactly an option.

 

Skye’s mind wouldn’t shut off. It wouldn’t stop replaying the earthquake in the tomb or the small tremor she made in the gym. Her powers were linked to her mental state and maybe her emotions. That much was obvious.

 

Skye flipped through some social media postings on her phone, checking to see what the fallout from San Juan was like. Most of the postings were the standard photos of the villa in ruins and the government making public announcements about finding the terrorists that did it.

 

Skye never thought she’d consider herself a terrorist, but time always brought change. Other postings were just teenagers and college students taking selfies standing next to the wreckage or participating in the cleanup.

 

Skye looked up to check on the SUV in front of her, the one with Bobbi and Hunter, and saw that they were moving on schedule. Bakshi was sitting in their SUV while Mack and Skye only had each other.

 

The silence continued to drag on.

 

\--

 

In the end, Skye shouldn’t have been expecting any action. Because as soon as she did that’s when the SUV’s were rammed into a storage building by a couple of warehouses.

 

Skye pushed open the door of her SUV and crawled out. Her hand gripped her pistol tightly. Mack followed shortly, his large frame having difficulty crawling through the crushed cab.

 

Skye turned her head and saw Bobbi and Hunter already out and fighting the assault team.

 

Adrenaline was pumping through Skye’s veins and prevented her from feeling the shaking of the ground beneath her feet.

 

It didn’t stop the other three or the assault team was feeling it.

 

Skye shot up from her hiding position on the passenger side of the engine and started firing at the men on the other side. She struck two of them in their chests and they fell down dazed but alive.

 

Hunter and Bobbi shared a look as they watched Skye fire at the hostiles. This was the third earthquake that involved Skye.

 

Once was coincidence. Twice was happenstance. Three times was pattern. Skye was the common variable between them. She had something to do with it.

 

The lovers nodded silently at each other before they shot up and finished off the four man strike team. Once they were down Hunter swapped his .45 for an ICER.

 

“Skye, love, want to tell us what’s going on?” Hunter spoke up.

 

Skye froze. The shaking didn’t stop. She felt the vibrations work their way through her gun shaking it apart to the frame. Skye dropped the gun as it finished falling apart.

 

Skye backed away from them. Hunter kept the ICER trained on her but other than that made no move towards Skye. Bobbi walked over and helped Mack to a sitting position against the SUV.

 

“Coulson,” Bobbi spoke into her earpiece. “Bakshi’s dead. We were ambushed. We need a medic and prepare a vault for quarantine.”

 

“Why?” Skye heard Coulson speak through the frequency.

 

“Because something’s wrong with Skye.” Bobbi answered as she looked back at Hunter.

 

“Skye, can you stop the shaking please?” Hunter asked softly, trying not to scare her and risk making the earthquake rise in magnitude.

 

“No,” Skye started chanting as the shaking overtook her body again.

 

They knew. They knew she was different. They knew she had powers. They would follow protocol. Meaning a lot of things Skye would like to avoid.

 

Hunter walked over to Skye briskly before shooting her with the ICER and catching Skye before she fell to the concrete.

 

“So what do we do now?” Hunter asked.

 

“That’s Coulson’s call, not ours.” Bobbi answered.

 

“Of course it is. How you doing Mack?” Hunter asked carrying Skye over to the SUV.

 

“Well I can’t really move my leg and I have a feeling I’m going to be spending a lot of time under the hoods of these things.” Mack said wistfully looking at the crushed sections of the SUVs.

 

“It could be worse.” Bobbi joked.

 

“How so?” Mack asked with a strained smile.

 

“Hunter could be speaking in a southern accent.” Bobbi answered.

 

“I’ll agree with her on that. It’s abysmal.” Hunter agreed.

 

The three friends shared a small laugh as they waited on their exfil.

 

\--

 

33 and Ward were sparring. Ward’s wounds were healed enough for light combat. Nothing over the top but enough to allow sparring.

 

33 threw a punch that Ward caught and used to flip her around to his chest. 33 responded by continuing the twist and attempting to elbow Ward in the face. He ducked in time but loosened his hold on 33’s wrist allowing her to wrench free from his grip.

 

33 and Ward turned to face each other, perspiration harsh on their heads from the hour they spent fighting like this.

 

“I think that’s good for today.” Ward conceded and walked over to the bench where his water bottle was.

 

33 tried not to notice the way he favored his left side a little more than she saw in the villa before he was shot.

 

“What’s our next move?” 33 spoke up.

 

“Lay low for a little while. We’re going to need to move safe houses in a couple of days but after that, we’re going to start prioritizing HYDRA heads.” Ward explained.

 

“Really? You _want_ to go after HYDRA with just me as backup?” 33 asked incredulously.

 

“You’re a decent fighter.” Ward replied hoping it would alleviate her concern.

 

“You’re still hurt, and I’m only one person. You’re talking all of HYDRA.” 33 explained her confused.

 

“Well, it’s either that or-“a knock at the door interrupted Ward’s words.

 

He and 33 quickly moved to either side of the doorway that stood between the family room and the front door. Ward pulled the pistol from the waistband of his pants and 33 pulled hers from the holster on her hip.

 

Ward moved from the doorway to the front door and looked through the peep hole.

 

Outside was a Hispanic man in a suit. Ward recognized him from the busts that use to stand in the academy library.

 

 

Ward opened the door but kept his gun trained on the man.

 

“What the hell are you doing here?” Ward asked the man harshly.

 

“I’m here for two of the best specialists that were once a part of S.H.I.E.L.D. I understand that you don’t have any work right now and I’m interested in changing that.” Gonzales spoke calmly as if he weren’t talking to a brainwashed operative and the traitor.

 

“Are you freaking kidding me?” Ward asked not believing what he was hearing.

 

“No I’m not. Now are you in?” Gonzales asked simply.

**Author's Note:**

> So obviously I'm not going to go too deep into the "real S.H.I.E.L.D." until Tuesday's ep where we hopefully get more information on them. After that, I'm interested in pursuing how the others handle Skye's powers without Sif and a Kree trying to kill them.


End file.
